ROYAL Shakespeare Company actress Dame Harriet Walter has put together an exhibition of photographs under the title of Facing It – Reflections On Images Of Older Women.

On display at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough until September 3, it brings together images of Dame Judi Dench with Dame Maggie Smith, Annie Lennox, Julie Christie, Phyllida Law with her daughter Emma Thompson, Mary Quant and Anita Pallenberg, alongside women not so famous.

Close-up of hands add another dimension to the ageing story too.

Harriet, who turned 60 last September and was made a dame for services to drama in the New Year’s Honours List, has been collecting images for several years of older women whose faces and lives have inspired and moved her.

In her collection of portraits by a variety of photographers, including herself, curator Harriet reflects on the process of ageing in a society where older women are often rendered invisible. She also ponders on her own advancing years and takes courage from the boldness, wit and audacity of the women in the photographs.

“Young girls and women are conditioned to aspire to look like other people,” she says. “From an early age, we leaf through magazines measuring ourselves up against airbrushed images of a fairly narrow standard of female perfection.

“The habit of aspiration dies hard and as I hit my fifties I wanted some role models to help me move into the next stage of life. I could find few, if any, photographic images of women my age to emulate. There were plenty of images of youthful perfection but I didn’t want to be young any more. I wanted to be the age I am.”

She first presented images of older women, some commissioned, others taken by herself, in an exhibition entitled Infinite Variety that was shown at the National Theatre, London, last year.

The project had been “absolutely welcome for so many women,” she told the Guardian “The generosity, the enthusiasm, the lack of vanity, the pleasure – the response has been so amazing from both people who looked at the pictures and people who allowed photographs.”

To tie in with the exhibitions, Harriet has written a book, also called Facing It, in which she notes how many of the featured women had felt invisible on reaching a certain age, although that had not applied to herself.

“My centre of who I thought I was never very consciously about being beautiful or attractive – I think I’m one of those people who’s actually grown into their looks,” she said in the Guardian article.

“But while we all feel 16 inside, I have to sort of repackage myself. I’m no longer the young woman I was playing before, and I’m in a profession where that continuum that is me is irrelevant to most people – they’re meeting me for the first time, seeing me for the first time, and they’re seeing an old woman, so that’s what I’ve got to start being.”

The Stephen Joseph Theatre gallery is open from 12 noon to 6pm, Monday to Saturday, except during performances. Admission is free.